Our team played tonight (Sat. June 21) at 8:30.

We went to Mike Jasnau this afternoon for the team coaching session.  We had 9 of the 10 bowlers from our pair at the session.

Last year, our team finished 499th, our best finish to date, and we were pretty happy about that.  This year we hoped to do at least as well as that.

Four of us hit the Roto Grip Challenge as a warm-up for the team event.  One of our guys was low to cash (391) for the day, and another was high for the day (459).

When we hit the tournament lanes, the first thing we noticed was that the practice session had prepared us pretty well for what we were seeing.  If anything, we found that we had a bit more room right than we had at Holiday.

With the exception of one of our guys (the guy who won the day at the Roto Challenge), we stuck to the plan for playing the lanes.  The other guy was just not comfortable playing between 7 and 9, so he stayed in his comfort zone of 11-14.  Our lone lefty also stuck to the plan put forth by Mike Jasnau.  BTW, our lefty said, "I know what he's going to tell me - he'll say 'You're on your own'!"  Guess what - that's exactly what he said - lol!

Anyway, we ended up shooting 987, 1085, 972 for 3044, which would put us in 118th place on the leaderboard as it stands right now.  We hope we can stay in the top 125 at this point in the tournament.  We left a lot on the table, with our 4th and 5th bowlers opening four times between them in the tenth frame for the three games.  I struggled a bit with transition in game two, shooting 187, opening in frames 1 and 3 and having air.  I ended up shooting 619 for team, and was quite happy with that.

I was throwing the Cell that I picked up at my teammate's pro shop and had drilled at Paul Yoder's shop in ABQ.  Some of you may remember the thread I started some time back about having a ball drilled in ABQ.  I'd like to give a big shout out to Paul for laying out and drilling the two balls that I took to him, which were the Cell and the Rapid Fire.  Of course, I'd like to give a big shout out to Mike Jasnau for his help in preparing us.

Tomorrow we'll hit the lanes again for doubles and singles.  I hope we can keep up the momentum.
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RW (THB)